U.S. President Donald Trump insists ¡°nothing¡¯s changed¡± in Washington¡¯s policy toward Taiwan. But as Jesse Johnson reported in this newspaper, America¡¯s commander in chief recently questioned whether U.S. forces should ¡°travel 9,500 miles to fight a war¡± and described a $14 billion arms package for Taipei as ¡°a very good negotiating chip¡± in dealings with Chinese leader Xi Jinping ¡ª remarks that underscore a widening gap between official policy and strategic reality.
As geopolitical currents shift, that gap has become a defining concern for policymakers in Tokyo. For years, Japanese defense planners focused on high-intensity contingencies, especially the possibility of a sudden amphibious invasion of Taiwan. But as the global order hardens into a U.S.-China bipolar system, Japan faces a different, more insidious challenge.
Its most pressing vulnerability is not outright war. It is a gradual squeeze ¡ª a scenario in which Chinese sub-threshold coercion intersects with the transactional foreign policy of the second Trump administration, leaving Japan economically constrained and strategically exposed.
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